Weight Loss and Sleep Apnea

More than half of obese people suffer from sleep apnea. Additionally, there is an elevated risk of heart attacks in people experiencing sleep apnea. As a result, sleep apnea is a significant health threat especially given the current pandemic. But, what is the connection between weight loss and sleep apnea?

But, what is the sleep apnea condition? Sleep apnea is a health condition that makes victims have breathing challenges while sleeping. Although the breathing challenges can last for minutes or seconds, they negatively affect your health wellbeing. 

So what causes it? How does weight gain or loss impact it? Are there other predisposing factors and management strategies? 

This article lets you know everything about sleep apnea, especially its correlation with weight. 

Types of Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea is a common sleep disorder that may vary in severity and symptoms. If you snore and experience fatigue after a whole night of sleep, you may be having sleep apnea. There are three types of sleep apnea.  

• Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) – This type of sleep apnea occurs when throat and neck muscles relax when you’re asleep. The relaxed muscles thus block the upper airway making it difficult to breathe as you sleep. Think of it as breathing with the help of a straw. Additionally, OSA can reach a maximum of 30 disruptions per night.
• Central Sleep Apnea (CSA) – Although not common, it comes from neurological malfunction. It only occurs when the brain fails to signal throat and neck muscles responsible for your breathing. In most cases, when you fail to breathe when sleeping, the brain will sense your breathing inability hence awakening you briefly. 

The brief awakening allows you to enhance airflow to help raise or maintain oxygen levels in the blood. Thus, CSA occurs when the brain can not coordinate your breathing when asleep. 

• Complex Sleep Apnea-Occurs when you both have OSA and CSA. 

Whatever the type, sleep apnea will lead to disruption of breathing and a drop in your oxygen levels. As a result, it will affect your overall health wellbeing. The most common health risk conditions linked to sleep apnea are high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart attacks. Similarly, these conditions are also associated with weight gain. So, what’s the correlation between weight gain and sleep apnea? Read on.

Weight Loss and Sleep Apnea

Although sleep apnea can develop due to multiple factors, Obstructive Sleep Apnea is prevalent after excess weight gain or in obesity cases. Excess weight gain can make you develop sleep apnea through pharyngeal fat. 

Pharyngeal fat forms and thickens at the back of your mouth around your neck when you gain weight. Because it is part of the upper airway, continuous fat deposit blocks it when neck muscles relax during sleep. It will create a very narrow airway. Hence, air will be forcefully squeezing through a very thin airway-leading to loud noises (snoring, snorting). Your snoring and snorting are some of the symptoms of sleep apnea. 

Also, excess weight gain shrinks your chest wall due to fat deposition that enlarges the abdominal girth. Therefore, you’ll have a shrinking lung volume that prevents normal airflow due to the decreasing lung capacity. Hence, the upper airway is prone to collapse when you’re asleep. 

Thus, any weight gain or increase in your BMI increases your OSA risk. More than three-quarters of OSA cases develop from being overweight. As a result, other minor causes like enlarged tonsils, acid reflux, anatomical features, diseases (endocrine, lung & heart) only account for a quarter of OSA cases. That makes weight gain a significant threat factor. 

However, sleep apnea (OSA) also leads to weight gain. For instance, sleep deprivation (due to OSA) can lead to more cravings for calorie-rich food. Hence, it may make you overeat, leading to weight gain. Additionally, daytime sleeping, a sign of OSA, reduces your physical activity, leading to less burning of fat. So, will losing weight help sleep apnea? 

How Weight Loss Affects Sleep Apnea

You can help manage the condition if you choose a healthy lifestyle, including diet and weight loss. Weight loss will help you manage sleep apnea in various ways:

• It will reduce fat accumulation on the tongue and pharynx, thus preventing blockage of normal airflow during sleep. 
• It prevents the accumulation of abdominal fat. Hence, it will increase lung volume preventing lung collapse when you sleep due to better airway traction. 
• Reduce some OSA symptoms (e.g., daytime sleepiness, irritability, etc.)
• Reduce comorbidity risks linked to sleep apnea, like better cardiovascular wellbeing. 

Thus, your weight loss may help improve your sleep apnea condition and assure you a better quality of life. However, weight loss may only reduce about half of the severity of sleep apnea symptoms and comorbidity risks. 

Thus, it’s not a complete cure for OSA. And what works for one patient may not necessarily apply to another. So, how much does weight loss stop sleep apnea, even if reducing the severity by half? 

How Much Weight Loss to Stop Sleep Apnea

Your weight loss program choice depends on the severity of your condition and at your doctor’s discretion. 

But below are weight loss methods based on urgency and severity;

• Adopting a healthy dietary behavior 
• Increased physical activity and avoiding a sedentary lifestyle 
• Medications that include pharmacological weight-loss interventions. 
• Surgical intervention

In most cases, you’ll have diet and physical exercise as recommendations for the early stages of sleep apnea. If such behavior changes have no solid results, medication or surgical intervention may apply to control your excess weight or obesity. 

Your improvement against sleep apnea symptoms is proportionate to your level of weight loss. Thus, you should engage your doctor for the best applicable weight loss method for your case. 

However, the complex relationship between sleep apnea and weight prompts early mediation. Although treating sleep apnea can help reduce your weight, overweight patients may need additional strategies for effective management. 

Takeaway 

Kindly seek early intervention if you suspect that you may be experiencing sleep apnea. The condition can affect your health wellbeing hence the need for early prevention. Although weight loss can help reduce some of the OSA symptoms, you may need additional intervention methods for better improvement.

 Additional intervention methods are vital because weight gain and sleep apnea have a complex relationship. Weight gain can lead to sleep apnea and vice versa. But, maintaining a healthy BMI can help you reduce the severity of sleep apnea.